Le Soula (Gauby), Côtes Catalanes blanc 2008

First impressions are everything when it comes to wine.

That first sip floods your senses with an experience rich in associations, capturing the essence of how that wine came to be and helping you identify its origins without the benefit of a label. Unfortunately that pure experience is so often coloured by preconceptions.

And that’s the beauty of tasting blind.

With nothing coming between your senses and the contents of your glass it’s the only real way to let wine speak on its own merits. But it occurred to me that in my game I rarely get to taste blind these days, so one evening last week I entrusted my partner in crime to pick something at random from the cellar, disguise it in the trusty odd sock and serve it to me blind.

I thought it might be fun to share my thought process as I approached my first glass.

Sniff – tight, lemony citrus and mineral nose. Puligny-Montrachet?

Sniff – hang on, now I’m getting subtle SB aromas and a hint of struck match. Pouilly-Fume from the flinty soils of the Loire?

Sip – a steely palate, but soft at the same time. Very approachable. Limestone soil perhaps?

Sip – and a decent whack of acidity. Awesome texture! Surely not a straight Sauvignon then. A blend? Bordeaux?

Sip – hang on, can’t be with that acidity, minerality and struck match.

By the end of the glass I couldn’t decide, all I knew was that the incredible texture had to be from a high-end producer… Oh shit, was this plucked from the ‘special’ corner of the cellar, strictly out of bounds on a Tuesday night?!

My wife sat opposite me with a poker face as I blurted out “SB from Sancerre, Pouilly Fume or a renegade producer around Touraine. But definitely Loire right?”

Wrong.

The wine is from way down south in the Roussillon. A blend of Sauvignon blanc (38%), Macabeu (35%), Vermentino (19%), Grenache blanc and gris (6%) and Malvoisie (2%). A typical blend for the region, but atypical in style. Some might say Burgundian. She’d got me.

Gérard Gauby makes wine in a very reductive manner – excluding oxygen from the process wherever he can – hence the struck match on the nose. Gauby is the pioneer of the Roussillon and remains one of the finest producers there today.

As I polished off the bottle I consoled myself with the thought that the best thing about tasting blind is when you get it wrong, because if you’re anything like me your ego takes a blow and you’re not likely to make the same mistake twice.

Gauby, I’ve got you pegged.

:::BO:::

B = Biodynamic: cynics think it’s voodoo but this is basically holistic farming that uses manures and composts to improve soil life and the interaction of the vines with their environment.

O = Organic: farming without the use of inputs that can have adverse effects. ‘Non-systemic’ fungicides and pesticides are used in place of ‘systemic’ chemicals said to enter the ‘blood’ of a plant (akin to antibiotics in the human world).